semantic

Etymology

The revised OED takes it as borrowed from Ancient Greek σημαντικός (sēmantikós, “significant”), which in Hellenistic Greek also meant giving signs of the weather,^[2] while for Barnhart, Etymonline, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Shorter Oxford it is borrowed from French sémantique.^[3][4][5][6] The Greek adjective is from σημαντός (sēmantós, “marked”), from σημαίνω (sēmaínō, “to show, signify”), from σῆμα (sêma, “sign, mark”).^[2][5][7] Etymonline traces sêma to Proto-Indo-European *dheie- (“to see, look”).^[4] In French, sémantique was applied by Michel Bréal to the psychology of language;^[4][8] the OED dates the French linguistic sense to 1897 and notes an isolated Middle French form symentique of 1561.^[2] The linguistic sense of the English adjective follows semantics.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Relating to divination by the interpretation of signs: 1665, in John Spencer's Discourse of Prodigies, a rare sense that soon died out.^[2] The Shorter Oxford and Ayto describe the 17th-century sense as reading the signs of the weather.^[6][9]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the word was adopted only briefly in the mid-17th century and did not come into its own as a linguistic term until the end of the 19th.^[9] The OED dates the sense "relating to meaning in language" to 1890, in John Earle's English Prose,^[2][10] and Barnhart and Etymonline to 1894.^[3][4] From 1939 it was used of meaning of any kind,^[2] and in the same year, often disparagingly, of a choice of words for euphemistic or tendentious ends, as in a "merely semantic" dispute;^[2] Etymonline notes that the word has tended to become loose in application.^[4] In computing, semantic has since 1998 described data tagged by meaning so that computers can read it, as in the semantic web.^[2]

Timeline

• 1665 – relating to divination by signs (obsolete).^[2]
• 1890 – relating to meaning in language.^[2][10]
• 1894 – in the linguistic sense, after French sémantique.^[3][4]
• 1939 – relating to meaning of any kind; also, of a choice of words, often disparaging.^[2]
• 1998 – in computing, of data structured by meaning.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Relating to meaning in language: a semantic shift in the word over three centuries.^[11][10][2]
2. Relating to semantics.^[11][10]
3. Relating to the different connotations of words with similar meanings; often disparaging, of a dispute that is only about words.^[10][2]
4. (logic) Concerned with the interpretation of a formal theory.^[11]
5. (computing) Relating to data tagged according to its meaning so that computers can process it.^[2]
6. (obsolete) Relating to signs of the weather, or to divination by signs.^[2][6]

Word family

• semantically
• nonsemantic
• semanteme
• semanticist

Related words

• semantics
• semasiology
• sematic
• seme
• sememe
• semiotic
• semiotics
• semaphore

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins